


Daughter of Earth

by aadarshinah



Series: The Doctor and The Spinner [5]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, Episode: s01e14 The Christmas Invasion, F/M, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Time Lord Rose Tyler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 13:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16893384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: Jackie Tyler has questions. Someone better have answers.Follows "Christmas Day".





	Daughter of Earth

**Author's Note:**

> So... This took a while, as work stops for no fic, but I'm quite happy with this one. It had been my original thought to have this one as part of "Christmas Day", but I think it ends up working better on its own.

"Okay, I get the meaning behind _seeing fireworks_ now," Rose says breathlessly, dizzy with shock and delight and lack of oxygen from lack of a sophisticated pulmonary system. "Or did we get the timing wrong? Don't tell me that space-time is exploding all around us."

"I'd almost prefer it," The Doctor replies darkly, eyes focusing on a spot far in the sky.

She squints around the dead spots in her vision, trying to see what has him radiating tension like the gathering of a storm. The Sycorax are thugs and gangsters. Surely they're not foolish enough to relaunch their attack - not so openly, and certainly not so soon.

And then she sees it: the Sycorax mothership, burning apple green in the atmosphere, reduced ash and chunks of sodium borate-infused rock.

"Oh, Harriet Jones," she breathes. "What did you do?"

"It was murder," he thunders, the arms around her tightening protectively before maneuvering to hold her against his side as instead. Rose has no idea if it's because the idea of letting go is anathema to him as it is to her or if he knows exactly how much the world is spinning around her, but she gratefully clings to him all the same.

The Prime Minister holds her head high. It doesn't quite distract from her trembling hands, but it might fool someone fully human. "That was defense. It's adapted from alien technology. A ship that fell to Earth ten years ago."

"But they were leaving," Rose whimpers, but no one but The Doctor hears her. No one but The Doctor ever hears her. Nobody ever _listens_.

"You said yourself, Doctor, they'd go back to the stars and tell others about the Earth. I'm sorry, Doctor, but you're not here all the time. You come and go. It happened today. Mister Llewellyn and the Major, they were murdered. They died right in front of me while you were sleeping. In which case we have to defend ourselves."

"Britain's Golden Age."

"It comes with a price." Harriet Jones sounds almost proud of it. Almost. Fear makes her fierce, but in all the wrong ways.

"I gave them the wrong warning. I should've told them to run as fast as they can, run and hide because the monsters are coming. The human race."

"Those are the people I represent. I did it on their behalf," the Prime Minister protests. Now she's beginning to get it. Now she's starting to understand that it's not the aliens she doesn't know about she should fear, but the one who greeted her warmly and would call down hurricane and holocaust on everything either of them loved if that's what it took to save everyone else. Human beings, always worrying about all the wrong things.

"Then I should have stopped you."

"What does that make you, Doctor? Another alien threat?"

She'll give Harriet Jones this: she knows what buttons to press. If this was her last Doctor, who had worn his pain and guilt closer to the surface than even his rage, her words would likely have stopped him cold. That man had been a genius, as bright and courageous as they came, but he could never stand for long against his own demons.

Well, Rose isn't having it. The Doctor may not be that man anymore, but the demons are still there. And he doesn't have to fight them alone. 

Rose slides her hand up to the center of his chest, holding back the storm. "You don't need to do this, Harriet Jones. I know you're scared and hurting and think swinging a stick will make you feel strong again, but that's not the kind of strong you want to be. I've seen what that kind of power does to a person and I promise you, you're better than that. Just let this go, yeah? Just walk away."

Betrayal floods Harriet Jones' eyes. "And you, Rose Tyler. Last time I saw you, you claimed to be human, but the aliens clearly recognized you as one of _his_ people. Was it all a lie to make me want to trust you, to get you both an in with the British Government? How do I know none of this hasn't just been a ruse protecting your own investment? Give me one good reason I shouldn't have you both arrested right now."

"Oh, that was a mistake, Harriet Jones." The Doctor promises darkly, brushing past Rose to rail in the Prime Minister's face. The possible futures surrounding the woman drop like mayflies, coalescing to a single, burning certainty that will ripple across space and time. "I'm a completely new man. I could bring down your Government with a single word."

The woman trembles, caught between rage and fear. "You're the most remarkable man I've ever met-"

-but Rose loses track of the conversation there as the world spins around her-

-or, no, the Earth is holding as still as it ever does, but it's the hands on her shoulders turning her about, bringing her face to face with something yellow and pink and bristling at the edges.

She blinks and furiously tries to make the colors bleed back out of each other. Rose isn't altogether successful, but eventually a voice breaks through the haze, familiar but, oh, there are too many words.

"-Rose. First you go sauntering off with this one, no phone call, not a thought for your dear old mum, a whole year spent thinking you were dead. Now you're back, God alone knows for how long this time or how long you'll be gone after, how many nights I'll have to spend thinking this time that you might've died on some alien planet and I'll never know, and _he_ 's wearing a different face and _you_ 're acting like it's all completely normal and the Prime Minister herself is saying you're an alien. I want answers, Rose."

But the spinning doesn't stop. The colors all slip together before fading at the edges and, oh, she knows this. This is shock, circulatory _and_ psychological, and maybe she should just lie down now.

Rose is unconscious before her eyes close.

 

* * *

 

She wakes to the sound of argument back in the flat where it all began, tucked into the bed The Doctor had occupied only hours before.

"-deserve some sort of explanation, because there may be something wearing my daughter's face in that room, but it's not _her_. So I want to know if you stuffed someone else in there on top of her or cut her out entirely-"

"Jackie-"

"I knew something like this was going to happen, didn't I? Right from the start, I said, 'Rose, there's something off about a man who runs around with a girl less than half his age, taking her away from her family and not even bothering to give her a proper name,' and look, I was right!"

"Jackie-"

"Is that what your lot do, then? Run around, looking for pretty girls to stuff yourselves into? Is that what you did? Found a pretty boy, hopped ship into him, left the old one lying dead by the side of some road a million miles from Earth? This model _is_ pretty, I'll give you that. Sure took you a while with Rose - was the last few months nothing but a trial run to see if you could stand looking at her for the rest of eternity, or was it the missus who couldn't decide if she was up to snuff?"

"Jackie-"

"Tell me, Doctor," and she says it so desperately that Rose can't help but hate herself for all the pain she's caused a woman whose only crime was to love her, "is my little girl even alive?"

"Oh, Mum."

"You're awake!" Mum gasps, rushing to her side from somewhere in the hall. The Doctor is close behind, though he lingers at the door as if readying himself to run the moment Mum turns the full force of her attention back on him. He's changed clothes, but Rose can only parse _brown_ before her attention is captured by Mum, wearing her worries like a cloak as mascara tracks down her cheeks in uneven streaks.

Rose flushes with shame. She'd once spent a lifetime desperate for her genetic donors to spare her even a sliver of this same care, and how here she is, having spent another not having appreciated it at all.

"How are you doing, darling?" Mum continues fretfully, smoothing her hair one moment and plucking at her quilt the next. "You gave all of us quite a scare, even that Doctor of yours. Didn't think that man knew how to get scared until you pulled that stunt, whatever face he has on. Do you need anything? Let me get you a little nip, it's the best thing after a fright like-" She catches herself, pulling back from the bed like someone burned. "I want my explanation."

"Mum-" she tries, pushing herself up onto her elbows. Blood rushes in her ears, but everything in the room stays exactly where it's meant to be.

"No, no more delays. I've already waited long enough. I want answers, Rose, and they better be bloody good ones."

"Can we at least do this in the kitchen? There's still all that food-" Oh! "Christmas! Don't tell me I slept through Christmas!"

"No, you were out for only half-hour or so. Just long enough for us to bring you here and get you settled."

"Good. I'm starving."

"Alright then. I'll get tea started while you two whisper about how much you're going to tell me- Don't give me that look, Doctor. I might not be some Lord of Time, but I know when someone thinks I'm too much of an idiot to know the truth."

The Doctor gives Mum a wide berth as she turns heel and marches out of the room, smart as any soldier, but is at Rose's side before she can untangle herself from the bedding. "Energy deficit," he says, an explanation and question both as he helps to free her. "By this point, there shouldn't be even residual Huon particles left in you, but instead they've stuck around, giving off just enough energy to be picked up on the sonic. The levels aren't increasing, but they are doing something - and they're using a lot of energy to do it."

"Something dangerous?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me," he admits with a sheepish look that's followed him right out of their schooldays. "Huon particles are supposed to unravel the genetic structure, amongst other things, and you're the geneticist."

Despite her exhaustion - and the headache that returned two-fold the moment she found her feet, - Rose finds herself giving him her best tongue-in-teeth smile. The thought of him not knowing how to fix something that is most likely going to kill her should be terrifying, but... He'd asked for her help, not to hold a lever or pass a beaker or listen as he lectured about whatever crossed his mind, but because he'd found something he didn't know. It was very human proof he needed her, for all the Time Lord science behind it, and she reveled in it. She might have the all memories and knowledge of Arkytior of Arcadia, but some part of her was still Rose Tyler.

Some part of her was still human. At some point, she'd have to figure out if that was a relief or simply terrified her.

"I'd need to run scans... But for that I need the TARDIS, and Mum might actually kill us if we tried running out on her now." She brings a hand up to bite a nail and starts to wobble the moment half her attention isn't on remembering which way's down.

"Right then," The Doctor says with a level of manic, forced cheer she thinks she'll need to watch out for in the future. "Dinner it is. Christmas dinner even! If you have to have an energy deficit, you picked a good day to do it. Or, rather, I picked a good day for it. Good to know that even on my worst day I've still got it."

Surprised laughter spills from her lips. "This version of you _has_ got a gob."

"That a problem?"

"Just different is all."

The water's just boiling when they get to the kitchen, and it's hard to tell if Mum is more surprised that they actually showed up or that they're laughing like fools when they do. She doesn't question it, though, which is a sign that she really wants answers if there ever was one, but...

"Well, go on then," Mum orders, slamming a cuppa in front of each of them before picking up a knife and hacking into the veg with vicious determination.

"I... I don't know where to begin."

"Well the beginning, of course. I don't know how time works for you lot, but things tend to start at the beginning for me."

"The beginning..." Rose swallows down the tremors already creeping into her voice and tries to find the words. "Once, a long time ago..."

_Once, a long time ago far in the future, on the Shining World of the Seven Systems, in the second city of Arcadia, a girl-child was born to those who ruled as surely as if they'd been kings, whatever they called themselves. The youngest of the seven Sons and thirteen Daughters of Gallifrey, half of whom were born mad-_

"-and the rest of which had madness thrust upon us," she spat bitterly, softening only when The Doctor reached across the table to slip her hand into his - an echo of that first, long ago comfort. She's been missing from his life for so long that he knows only parts of the story, but that's more than enough to know the vast understatement lingering unseen in her words.

_Though she wasn't born mad, neither was this Daughter of Gallifrey quite like other children. Like her siblings, many of whom were centuries dead and most of whom she never knew, she was able to see what few others on her world could: that there was something fundamentally wrong at the heart of their society._

_Eventually, this child decided that it was the gaping hole in reality they called the Untempered Schism that was responsible for it. It destroyed their children, driving most of them mad in ways too subtle and pervasive to be easily recognized and filling the rest with the mad idea that all of time and space was theirs to use and discard as they saw fit, so superior were they... Only a few were smart enough to run, and they weren't enough to effect any sort of change._

_So she rebelled. She tried to close the rift and they punished her for it._

"-a little out of order, but the result was the same."

_And then came The Time War. War, and all the terrible things people do._

"So that's it then," Mum says in the silence that follows when Rose finishes. "All those years, all those wasted nights spent thinking you were dead or as good as, and it turns out I wasn't even your mum at all. Whatever daughter I had is _gone_ ," Mum chokes on this, waves of fresh mascara staining her cheeks, "and you, the one that took her place, you were just using me as an easy way of keeping a roof over your head until you could get back to _him_."

"It wasn't like that-"

"Oh? So you're telling me you're _not_ planning on taking off with this one first chance you please? Least now I know why you never bother to call, never bother to visit more than twice a year when I know for a fact that ship of yours could have you by every Sunday without batting an eye. Like I said, I was just a placeholder. Now that you've got him, you don't have any reason for me at all."

"Mum-"

"Oh, that's rich. Spend all evening telling me that you're an alien princess or as good as and still you pull out _Mum_ now you think you've lost a free place to do the wash."

"No, I-" Rose needed to make her understand, needed to make her _see_ , but she'd never been good at making herself heard, not until- "I was so afraid. All that life, I was so afraid. For a while I had The Doctor, but then they took me from him, and I was alone and afraid and desperate. I didn't know how to fight them, so I tried to _erase myself from existence_ because I couldn't take another day of being so terrified of everything and everyone around me...

"And instead I ended up here. With you. I used to be so afraid, but you taught me how to be strong. You taught me how to stand up for myself, how to make myself heard when all anyone else saw was someone too poor or low class or _stupid_ to matter. Everything that happened to me in this life with The Doctor before I remembered, that may have shown me how to make a stand, but you're the one that taught me how to _stand up_. He may have shown me a better way of living, but you're the one who taught me how to _live_.

"I wouldn't be here, Mum, remembering, if it wasn't for you. You're my mum. You will always be my mum. I'm sorry, so sorry for hurting you, but I love you. How could I not love you?"

Rose doesn't know at what point in her desperate speech she started crying, but she's sobbing now, and she's can't lose Mum like this, she can't. And then there are arms around her and for a moment she thinks it's The Doctor again offering her the only comfort he could, but no. She knows that shock of blonde hair, the smell of that shampoo.

_Mum_.

They cling to each other desperately, choking out _I'm sorry_ 's and _I love you_ 's as tears roll down their cheeks and Christmas dinner burns around them. And maybe, just maybe, Rose - The Spinner, Arkytior, whoever she is and whoever she may yet be - thinks the universe will let her have this too.

**Author's Note:**

> Right now I'm thinking of one more fic, to wrap things up, and then I have a terrible plot bunny for "Smith and Jones" in this universe... but we'll see what happens.


End file.
